I’m one of the worst quitters in the world.

It’s true … I can recall only a handful of things that I have consciously quit in my life.

One of them was swim team.

…

The summer between 7th and 8th grade, I was on the summer track team and I decided to join swim team, as well. I have always loved to swim, so I was excited. This would be my sport. I was born for this. I was gonna kick butt at this.

I hated it.

Not only did I hate it, I was bad at it.

Still, I waited until several weeks after my first horrendous meet (did I mention I was bad at it?) to quit. Every weekday for most of the summer, I biked two miles to track practice, ran track for a couple hours and then biked to the pool for swim team practice.

(Did I mention I hated it?)

I couldn’t let myself off the hook. I’d made a commitment, I should like swim team. I should be good at it. (I had a racing suit!) Quitting would mean I was wrong. Wrong to commit, wrong to try something new, even wrong about how much I loved to swim.

Finally, I decided I didn’t care. My level of loathing trumped any sense of failure. Swim team made me unhappy. I didn’t like it. In fact, I hated it.

…

After quitting, I realized that I still loved to swim. I didn’t like competing or training. One really had nothing to do with the other. And if I hadn’t tried it I would might have regretted never being on a swim team. (And, hey, how else would I have learned that I hated it? *smile*)

Most important, quitting swim team didn’t mean I had to quit swimming. It didn’t mean I didn’t “know myself.” It didn’t mean that I was a failure. (It simply meant I didn’t have to bike to the pool after track practice.)

…

When creating spontaneous “songs,” sometimes you have to quit an idea. You might be attached to it, you might love it — but it isn’t working.

Or, you hate your idea. It maybe even kind of works. But every time you try to sing it, your inner critic takes another whack at your self-esteem. (“That is sooo __________”  … well you know better than I what she says. *wink*)

In either case, your idea doesn’t fit into that piece at that moment.

It doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea. It doesn’t mean that you never have good ideas. Or that you should just stop singing altogether. (Heaven forbid!) It’s about the “fit.” It’s about timing, cooperation and the function of your idea in that particular piece as a whole. So instead of stubbornly jamming your square peg into that round hole, give yourself permission to quit.

Here’s the cool part, letting go of something that doesn’t work lets you move on to something that does.

Let me say that again: Letting go of something that doesn’t work lets you move on to something that does.

…

Expert quitters know this.

Over the years, I’ve met expert quitters. (I’m related to one. *smile*) They are not flighty failures unable to commit. These “quitters” are some of the most driven people I know. They tackle BIG goals (multiple degrees, changing careers, start-up companies) and quit the small stuff and the yucky stuff.

Expert quitters are unwilling to be unhappy, dissatisfied, disrespected, or disinterested a second longer than necessary. They listen for the sound of the whole and, when needed, they have the grace (and the grit) to quit.